This is going to be long, so forgive me. It is part of my diary for remembering some of my thoughts and impressions, but it would be a shame just to waste them on me alone.
Just to clarify, I am easily impressed when it comes to dOCUMENTA. I have sentimental feelings about Kassel and I am often convinced and feel a strong relationship with German art in general. Seen all his works endless times before, I still went to The Gerhard Richter show at Tate modern a few times. His confrontation series, led me and a friend to revisit the case of Rote Armee Fraktion and the reason to finally watch the Baader Meinhof Complex. Reading Gunter Grass and Walter Benjamin in conjunction to history, is not only regarding the past, but always open and changing, spread on to long discussions about revolutions, the tragedy, how history unfolds and run traces through generations, and the paradox of time being so swiftly but how nothing is never over and how we through bloodlines inside us all carry history.
dOCUMENTA is also called the 100 day exhibition; its format being that it runs for 100 days, but only every 5th year. It started 1955 with the aim of showing the German people the modern (at that time contemporary) art, which had been inaccessible to them due to the censorship of the previous years fascist regime. When I say one does not simply walk into dOCUMENTA it is with the thought of Boromir from the Lord of the Rings saying with ‘fear and disbelieve’ in his voice; one does not simply walk into Mordor, the land of the evil enemy. dOCUMENTA is not an enemy, but it is an overwhelming beast of incomprehensible size and (this year) depth. Just scratching the surface takes time and a long tiring persistent effort. dOCUMENTA is afraid of no one, not afraid of taboo and the things that hurt, not afraid to be boring, not afraid of content and making statements, aren’t sucking up to funfair entertainment. The reason for going through all this is of course the gain for endeavour is highly rewarded. Our daily existence is transcendented, time starts to stand still, the world opens, history replays itself and places you in this world linking everything that have ever been and everything that will come. If you allow it, you enter as one and leave as another.
It’s not easy to get to Kassel, you just don’t pop by, it is in the middle of flipping nowhere with ca. 200 km to the nearest airport. So just the journey comes close to a spiritual experience of making a ‘pilgrims fare’. There is a physical ritual of going to Kassel with the rhythm of 5 years, it looks the same, the light is the same, the atmosphere is the same, everything is repeated in a rigorous pattern. But five years has passed, things have changed, Kassel has changed, five years have passed, I have changed five years have passed. New experiences are built on top on them that are already there, the new ones to add or to alter the old ones.
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